Today I want to bring to your attention an issue in the SQL Server Management Studio 2012 restore GUI. In many ways the new restore dialog is nicer than the old one, with new features and added convenience – but, as is always the Achilles heel of GUI tools like this, if you don’t know what’s really going on it can bite you. I’m not sure what to ...

I've filed a few Connect items recently that I think are important.
In #752210, I complain that the documentation for DDL triggers suggests that they can prevent certain DDL from being run, which is not the case at all.
...

A long, long time ago in a galaxy you can reach out and touch right now, ORDER BY in a VIEW meant something. If you had a view like the following:
CREATE VIEW dbo.RubbishAS SELECT TOP 100 PERCENT Trash FROM ...

I’ve seen the question a few times now: “How do I compare two plans side-by-side in Plan Explorer?” Management Studio allows you to view multiple graphical plans that are visible simultaneously, either by generating plans for every statement in a batch, or by generating plans in separate query windows and then splitting the panes. However, at ...

This month's T-SQL Tuesday is being hosted by Allen White (@SQLRunr) and is about sharing your T-SQL tips and tricks. Since I know many people will share their T-SQL magic and wizardry, I thought I would share a couple of productivity tips - so still T-SQL related, but more how to take advantage of some features in SSMS.
Drag column list onto ...

Where is my graphical ShowPlan?
Many of you on SQL Server 2008 R2 are experiencing a major annoyance with SSMS since installing service pack 1 - when clicking a plan from grid results, you get raw XML instead of the graphical plan. I wrote about this symptom and a workaround in a previous post. In the original Connect item, they state that it ...

For those of you using the SQL Server 2008 R2 version of Management Studio, and have applied Service Pack 1, you have probably noticed that clicking on a ShowPlan in grid results no longer shows the graphical plan, but rather opens a new window with the raw XML.
For example, running the following query:
SELECT TOP (5) ...

On Friday, we published a new version of our free query plan analysis tool, SQL Sentry Plan Explorer. As noted in the change list, we've added a couple of important features.
SQL Server 2012 support
With a whole slew of changes to the showplan schema in Denali, we've added operators and columns to reflect these changes. For example, you will ...

UPDATE - This demo kit has been overhauled:
http://sqlperformance.com/2014/03/t-sql-queries/updated-plan-explorer-demo-kit
Plan Explorer is a free application from SQL Sentry, designed
to make execution plan analysis faster and easier. It was developed in response
to customer demand for deeper query analysis, but was ...

I have two little boys at home, and my parents were both teachers. It gives me a strange relationship with our public schools – I am passionate about them, and the quality of education I want for my kids, but I have to keep my distance a little, lest they drive me completely around the bend. One reason it’s so frustrating: among all the complex ...